


His Heart Still Beats (Thank Fucking God)

by AngeNoir



Series: Write-Away Giveaway Fills on Tumblr [5]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, descriptions of medical procedure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 06:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is adjusting to New York in October, and Steve watches nature documentaries when he's bored. It all works out.</p><p>  <em>Stand alone story as a follow up to "My Heart Still Beats (Stubborn Fucker)."</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	His Heart Still Beats (Thank Fucking God)

**Author's Note:**

> As a celebration for reaching 100 followers on tumblr, I'm holding a giveaway [here](http://outercorner.tumblr.com/post/51036127748/write-away-giveaway-last-call-3-hours-left), and what I'm giving away is prompt fills for anyone who asks! I received this prompt from [pagen-godess](http://pagen-godess.tumblr.com):
> 
>   _I'd love to see a follow up for my heart still beats. Nothing huge mind you. Just some hurt/comfort because tonys having a really bad day pain wise. Maybe its cold and raining/snowing out and even pain medication isn't really working. Though i guess you could do the same with him still having the arc reactor. Either would work. My pairing is stony of course._

“Sir, should I contact Ms. Potts?”

“No, JARVIS, I’m fine.”

There was a pause, and then JARVIS asked, “Should I contact Captain Rogers?”

Tony, leaning against the wall outside his favorite coffee shop, gave that more consideration. Contacting Pepper would make her worried and upset, and he was trying to minimize that, actually, since their last huge fight, but Steve was actually in the tower and near enough that, if it came to it, he could actually get to Tony.

But Tony wasn’t about to admit that he needed help to get back to the tower.

So he shook his head, even though out here JARVIS didn’t have any visual sensors to pick up the negative movement, and said, “No, JARVIS, I’m good, I’m great. In fact, I might even jog back to the tower.”

“Your optimism is blinding, sir.”

Tony huffed out a laugh, rubbing at the earpiece that kept him connected to JARVIS’s systems. He’d only gone out for coffee, that was it. He’d forgotten the weather New York normally displayed in late October, living in Malibu for so long, and hadn’t taken more than a light jacket. Yeah, he’d had windows in the board room, he’d seen the grey drizzle, but the coffee place was _just_ down the block a bit and he’d had no problem before waltzing out and being back within fifteen minutes. Ten, even, sometimes.

But he’d forgotten how much the arc reactor had hated the rain – and now, even without the arc reactor, how having a disc of metal a good two inches deep in your chest would react to the cold and the wet.

With the arc reactor, it had sat heavy in his chest. It had ached and pulled in his chest, gravity making it rest hard against the bottom of the scooped out cavity Yinsin had made. Lying on his back could sometimes make him feel as if it was crushing his lungs – lying on his front shoved it harder against them even more. But the arc reactor had been, at the heart of it, a battery. A battery that was continuously expelling energy, magnetizing the electromagnet nestled up against the vein leading to the heart. Not directly against it, no – because then it would mean that, should the magnet ever fail, the pieces would be right there, slipping into his heart and tearing the delicate flesh from the inside out. He would have bled out in a minute or two when Obie had removed the second arc reactor from his chest, had the shrapnel really been that close.

In any case, the current required to magnetize the electromagnet enough so that the shrapnel remained localized to a part of the vein that was large enough to accommodate them had created marginal heat in and of itself. There was never perfect transfer of energy; heat bled off of all electronics as wasted power. In the caves of Afghanistan, sometimes the heat in his chest from the car battery was the only thing warm in the night. In his house in Malibu, he could feel a faint thrum of the arc reactor and a gentle glow if he closed his eyes and stilled his mind.

There was no electromagnet, and no arc reactor, in his chest anymore. Just metal, that soaked up heat and sapped it from his chest and made his very bones ache and throb horrifically.

“Sir, should I send a car for you?”

“Hey mister, you okay?”

Tony looked up at the teenager, hovering in the doorway of the coffee shop, clearly wanting to go all the way in, though some form of good Samaritan-ism was making him ask. “I’m fine,” he said, responding both to JARVIS and the kid. “Just taking a break.”

With that, he forced himself to walk onwards. The rain that was drizzling felt like icy fingertips trailing down his scalp, his spine, even his ass. Cars drove just as crazy as always, making pedestrians hug the sidewalk closest to the buildings to prevent themselves from being splashed by tires. Tony could _see_ the Avengers tower, not even that far up the block, but every step felt like a monumental effort, and his lungs felt labored, as if the cold was making the metal expand and crush his lungs, not contract as metal was supposed to do. His ribs, though – his ribs knew that the metal was contracting, curling in on itself, making his bones creak. The metal alloy was flexible, it wasn’t going to majorly contract and jeopardize his health and his skeletal structure, but he always had an active imagination.

The doorman gave him a sympathetic look, and Tony made a mental note to make certain that the doorman’s booth by the front doors was completely climate controlled so that the doorman didn’t need to freeze his ass off either. Making his way across the lobby, past the line of elevators to the private elevator, he nodded ever so slightly at everyone who greeted him and hugged the rapidly cooling coffee to his chest as if that could warm up the hunk of metal embedded in his chest.

In the ride up to the top ten floors, designated for the Avengers’ quarters, JARVIS gave him an update and the status of the multiple Avengers. Natasha and Clint were both off at SHIELD, training, and Thor had gone to visit Jane Foster. Bruce was out of the building at the moment, and Steve was in the common room, watching television.

“Wait, JARVIS, if Steve’s in the—”

Before he could finish his sentence, the elevator doors opened, and Steve looked up to see him standing there, dripping wet and hunched shoulders and curled arms around his chest.

“You are a traitor, JARVIS,” Tony muttered under his breath.

“I try, sir.”

“Tony? Why were you out in this weather?” Steve asked, bemused, as he stood up.

Their relationship was still in the tentative stage, Steve nervous and Tony commitment-shy in a whole new way, in that he didn’t want to fuck up the team and he already knew he couldn’t keep a real relationship going even when he did everything possible to keep it going (read: Pepper). In any case, Steve was rarely, if ever, affectionate outside of the bedroom.

Which was why it surprised Tony, when he began to hold up the coffee and spew out a convoluted explanation for his hair that was plastered against his neck and forehead and the ruined suit and the practically see-through white dress shirt underneath, that Steve came up to him and placed his hands on Tony’s shoulders, rubbing his thumbs in circles that completely derailed Tony’s explanation.

“Why don’t you get out of that wet stuff and into something dry? I’ll heat up the coffee for you, again,” Steve murmured, gently extracting the now-cold cup of coffee from Tony’s clawed grip.

Grumbling under his breath, Tony disappeared into the hallway and took the spiraling stairs up one level to his bedroom, where he promptly shucked shoes and all clothing and, naked, grabbed his fluffy robe and threw it on, beginning to shiver as the air hit his wet skin. A few seconds of scrounging had him pulling on a pair of boxers and then he made his way back down instead of huddling in his thick comforter because _coffee_.

Steve craned his neck around when Tony approached, smiling, and he patted the couch next to him.

“Don’t fool around with me, Steve, I want my coffee, and that is _not_ my coffee, I risked my life for my coffee, do you know how cold and wet it is outside?” Tony demanded.

Steve rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Tony, just sit down. Drink your hot chocolate.”

“I am a grown man. I don’t need—” Tony broke off when Steve opened up a bag and dropped white dots into his own mug. “Are those mini-marshmallows?”

Steve pretended to study the packet closely. “Why, yes, yes they are.”

“No one likes a smartass, Steve,” Tony grumbled, moving around the couch and sitting down, trying to repress his shudders. “Gimme.”

Laughing, Steve trickled in a generous amount of mini-marshmallows into the Iron Man mug Tony had bought for himself and handed it over to Tony, who took it and immediately ate half the marshmallows.

“What’re you watching?” Tony asked, finally focusing in on the screen. It looked like a nature documentary.

Steve waved absently at the large screen. “Just passing the time. Learning about the animals of the Sahara.”

Tony drained the last of his mug, realizing just how thirsty he was, and how good the warmth felt trickling down his throat, even if it couldn’t reach that kernel of cold in the deep of his chest. “I need my coffee,” he muttered. “Where’d you put it—ack!”

Because Steve was taking the mug and then tugging Tony down onto his back, into Steve’s lap, and he was undoing the top of the robe. “You always rub at your chest, Tony,” Steve murmured, and his hands felt unnaturally hot as they pressed gently against Tony’s chest. “Does it ache, I wonder?”

Tony had not told anyone about the feeling of pressure, the shifts and bites of metal against his internal organs. Scowling up at Steve – suppressing the last of his shivers – he said pointedly, “I have things to do, Steve. Today was supposed to be a productive day.”

“It was,” Steve argued back quietly, hands rubbing and soothing and – oooh – _massaging_ over Tony’s sternum. It felt like the heat from Steve’s hands were soaking into Tony’s flesh and slowly warming the metal beneath. “Now you get to relax. No one’s here to bother you or push you or anything. Just you and me.”

And that – that didn’t sound that bad. It felt even better. But—

“Wan’ my coffee,” Tony grumbled. “Risked death for it.”

The competent hands paused briefly. “Really?”

A tiny warning bell began to ding at the back of Tony’s mind. “No, no’really,” he mumbled.

“How long has this been hurting?” Steve asked, and he sounded Very Disappointed.

Tony huffed and curled against Steve’s belly, nuzzling with his nose against those beautiful abs. “Not really hurting.”

Steve let out a sigh above Tony and those hands went back to straightening Tony out so they could massage more.

Tony fell asleep, lulled by British accents talking about alligators, Steve’s interested comments, a belly warmed by cocoa, and a chest warmed by Steve.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Metal and Glass (The April in Paris Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6036988) by [Veldeia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veldeia/pseuds/Veldeia)




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